Three Hour, One Tank Enduro

My last blog post was about a race on the simulator using iRacing which was a 3 hour team race. Funnily enough, the weekend after that race which myself and Jason finished 4th out of 37 people in the top split, I had the chance to run an endurance race at the track where I work, Harris Hill Raceway.

Harris Hill Raceway hosts a race called “Three Hour, One Tank Enduro”. This race is three hours long, and you have to finish in one tank of gas. I decided the day before to run this race. I drove my 2011 Hyundai Sonata, and had a good strategy planned out. The day of the race, I woke up early, filled my tank up with gas, and headed to the track. Once I got there, I checked in with Philip, who was running timing, and put a transponder in my car to be able to track the laps.

This race started 12 cars. There was a Porsche GT4, a couple Miata’s, and a Tesla even attempted it.

Because we run the track on both directions at Harris Hill, we started off the first hour and a half going counter clockwise, to a 5 minute break/ driver change, then the last hour and a half going clockwise.

The start of the race was a lot of fun. My strategy was to drive like I was driving in the highway, starting off a bit slow and slowly improving the lap times, not even putting the car in manual mode and shifting gears, just letting it do automatically. It was a lot of fun because the pack was all together, which made up for some good battles on track. Myself and a Miata were going back and forth overtaking each other and I had a lot of fun. I was keeping up with the timing on my phone, but unfortunately, my phone died for the second stint.

When the first hour and a half was done, I came into the pit lane, and immediately ran up the hill to go to the bathroom. I was the first person to see the checkered flag which gave me a little bit of extra time compared to everyone else to go use the bathroom, since the 5 minute break mark started as soon as the first car (me) went into the pit lane. I completed 45 laps in this first stint.

By this point, I had more than half a tank of fuel left and knew I could push for this second half. Two cars had already fallen out (one of them being the Tesla, duh) So I was just happy I wasn’t running in last place.

The beginning of the second half, I came out really strong. Know I was shifting gears and pushing my car to its limit, but I was cautions and would do a cool down lap every now and then to save fuel and to make sure I made it to the end. I always kept in mind that it’s a long race and to finish first, you first have to finish.

There was a point during the second half of the race where I didn’t see anyone in front of me, or behind me. I knew the checkered flag hadn’t been shown yet so I figured people were falling off. I got to the top of turn 4, which is up on a hill, and as I came down, I looked around the track to see where everyone else was at. I only saw 6 cars left on track and knew I had a chance to do well.

During this last stint, my worst lap was a 1:45:439 and I did the best lap I had ever done with the Sonata on the track at a 1:42.089. I saw my friend Rachel had came by to watch me race, and caught her out of the corner of my eye while I was passing by the start/finish line, which made go a bit quicker and pull off some nice overtakes for her to see.

After the race was over, I didn’t know what position I had finished in, but I was happy to have finished the race. During the awards ceremony, I was surprised to hear Courtney (the COO of the track) say that I had completed 95 laps, 4 laps behind the leader, which was the Porsche GT4 and I had finished in second place.

It was an awesome time, and I had some great racing with people I knew. After the event, Harris Hill hosted the annual downhill derby, where members build downhill racer cars, and we taken them down from the top of turn 4. Rachel and myself went on to go down on a bunch of different downhill derby cars, this was my favorite one.